LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 1

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LEO COMPUTERS SOCIETY

ISSUE Spring 2020 Vol. 7

N ormality has gone out of the window for all of us

because of Covid-19. I hope you are managing to

cope and are keeping safe and well.

The virus has affected the Society’s events of course, and

as you will have heard, we have decided to postpone the

next Society reunion until Spring 2021. Please put the new

date – Sunday, 18th April 2021 at the Victory Services

Club, London – into the ‘save the date’ section of your

diaries now. We know it will be a great occasion and we will

keep you up to date on further details later in the year.

Before that, we will be holding our very first ‘virtual’ AGM on

Wednesday, 17th June – we will shortly be sending you full

details on how you can take part.

Now I must turn to the National Lottery Heritage fund grant

application. You are aware that we were successful in the

application for the development phase of the Project which

ended last November. We were then able to apply for

further funding for the implementation phase of the project.

If we get this funding it will enable us to continue our work

on the LEO Heritage project, planned for completion in

2023. The key aspects of this are to fully implement the

LEO l Virtual Reality project, produce a new LEO film and

complete the digitising of LEO’s historical documents and

make them widely available to researchers etc. This will

also include the completion of the project that CCH have

been working on to make LEOpedia widely available.

LEOpedia is the reference aid which Frank Land has

developed, and has been maintaining, to provide links to all

sources referring to LEO material around the World. The

Covid-19 emergency is delaying progress on follow-up

grants, but we hope to have some good news very soon.

Along with other museums, our

partners, the Centre for

Computing History, Cambridge

have had to close and they are

experiencing the obvious

problems that this causes. Despite

this they are still trying to work on

the LEO heritage project. Lisa and

Jude tell you more about this in

their project update.

Some years ago the family of Ernest “Len” Lenaerts

donated his notebooks to the Society. In around 50

notebooks, Len described what he had been doing

throughout his time with Lyons and LEO. It included his

work with the EDSAC team at Cambridge prior to his work

on LEO. It also included his work in the early stages of LEO

l. The notebooks went missing and this year we had the

tremendous news that they have been found where they

were last seen at the Reform Club in London. Lisa and

Frank tell you the about Notebooks in their article.

We had a tremendous response from members all around

the world to our request for volunteer speakers to tell the

LEO story. We are grateful to Neville Lyons for not only

allowing us to use the text of his talks and PowerPoint

slides but also for managing the whole process. Neville will

tell you about how well the talks went.

Australia features in three articles: I report on my lunch with

LEO lll Aussies in Melbourne. Some of you will have seen

the ICL All Stars newsletter, which is published in Australia

for retired ICL people, including some who worked on LEO.

Ian Pearson, its publisher/editor, tells you all about it. The

Message from our Chairman – Peter Byford

Editor: Hilary Caminer

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1. Message from our Chairman P. 1

2. HLF Project Update P. 2

3. The Lenaerts Notebooks P. 4

4. LEO Publicity Bears Fruit P. 5

5. Memories from Oz – part 2 P. 6

6. LEO Reunion in Melbourne P. 7

7. Hilary meets Ian P. 8

8. Cynthia Reade – Memories of LEO P. 9

9. Recollections of TRT P.10

10. Hidden Treasures P.11

11. LEO goes to South Africa P.13

12. Frank Land’s OBE P.14

13. Obituary to Tony (A.B.) Morgan P.14

LEO Matters

This Issue - Index

Registered Charity No. 1182253

1951—LEO I Operational

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 2

2 last of the Aussie articles is the second part of Neil

Lamming’s article about LEO in Australia. (Part I was

published in our previous LEO Matters, still available on our

website.)

The talks and magazine articles that Neville discusses in

his paper have generated interest from LEO people who did

not previously know about the Society. One of those is

Cynthia Reid, a remarkable lady recruited as a design

engineer by John Pinkerton in the 1950s. She tells you

about her career in a short article.

Frank Land has written a portrait of one of LEO’s heroes,

TRT. T Raymond Thompson was a real pioneer of LEO and

eventually Managing Director of LEO Computers Ltd.

Hilary Caminer, our excellent secretary, and daughter of the

redoubtable David, has been delving into her father’s

papers and found some gems and some interesting South

African LEO advertisements which she tells you about.

Finally there is our usual “news in brief” a variety of items to

keep you updated. We include here an appreciation of Tony

Morgan, our Technical Advisor who died in April aged 82.

This is written by John Daines who worked for Tony at

Minerva Road and who remained a friend.

As usual, we are always pleased to hear from our

members. Many of you have, over the past months, sent us

information about memorabilia that you have located and

brief reminiscences about your time working with LEO

machines. We really welcome your input – and, indeed, are

always looking for people to volunteer their time and skills

to help us. That could be by joining our group of Oral

History interviewers and editors, our team giving LEO talks

(when these are able to resume), by assisting in our social

media publicity work – or indeed contributing an article to

this publication. We look forward to hearing from you!

Secretary@leo-computers.org.uk

T he project’s development year ended in mid-November

2019. We submitted our bid for further funding at that

point, which entailed submitting a large number of

documents. We then had a visit from the NLHF on 12th

February 2020 which Hilary Caminer attended and which

went well.

To sum up the achievements of the development year, we

now have:

• A safe physical archive of LEO materials at CCH,

consisting mostly of documentation but also pieces of

hardware, tapes, photographs and memories/stories.

Jude Brimmer, our Archivist, has undertaken a

preliminary survey of the material and has put into

place the structures that will allow the material to be

part of a collection that meets not only accredited

museum standards but also archival standards. This

archive is the absolute core of the project. It includes

60 separate accessions thus far, circa 120 boxes of

material.

• From the physical archive, a digital archive is being

created that is available online in several places (the

Notes on Peter Byford

Peter joined LEO Computers Ltd as a programmer in 1961, straight from school when 17 years old. He enjoyed

programming and systems analysis, despite the often long hours (without overtime).

A keen sportsman, without much ability, he played for LEO and for Lyons second team at cricket. In 1964 he organised the

winning LEO team for the Lyons Pennant day (a multi sport event against other Lyons departments).

Peter left LEO soon after the merger and went on to work as a Programming team leader or system analyst at a number of

companies & consultancies before joining British Gas Eastern in 1971 initially as a programming team leader. In over 25

years his roles included systems analyst, quality assurance manager and data manager. During his period at British Gas he

was, for a few years, Technical Director of the ICL User conferences. After leaving British Gas in 1996, he became a self

employed data analyst, finally retiring in 2005.

In 1981 Roy Farrant, who had organised several LEO reunions, “passed the baton” to Peter. Thirty-nine years later .........

Peter says he was and still is supported by excellent committee members. If anyone wants to take over they would have

Peter’s blessing.

Peter is married with two children. His daughter and family live in Melbourne, Australia - including two granddaughters. His

son and his wife and twin granddaughters live in England. Peter’s hobbies include family history and home winemaking (he

founded the Ware Wine and Beer Circle in 1978). He plays bridge, badminton and golf, although none of these very well.

Progress Update on LEO’s National Lottery Heritage Fund project April 2020

by Lisa McGerty, Project Manager, Centre for Computer History, Cambridge

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 3

3 Archives Hub) https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk, which

allows the material to link with over 300 other archives,

the CCH website https://bit.ly/LeoWelcome which roots

it within CCH’s wider collections and locates it within

LEOpedia https://bit.ly/LEOPEDIA and it will also be,

to some extent, visible on the LCS website too via

LEOpedia and via links. With the current virus threat,

work has slowed down because CCH is closed, but it is

still very much carrying on.

Prior to having to close, CCH had 3 volunteers who

work only on LEO and, along with Jude and I, they

have so far created 3,000+ scans which have been

added to the digital archive and will become available

online in time. As they scan, they undertake a built-in

OCR process with Adobe Acrobat for the printed and

typescript documents which makes the content

searchable within the CCH catalogue and also,

importantly, makes it possible for search engines like

Google to find it. We are also transcribing some

manuscripts such the Lenaerts notebooks (https://

bit.ly/2vg55y1) and content tagging (subject indexing)

material wherever possible. It is also possible for

Society members to input their knowledge into the

catalogue items using the CCH ‘comment on this page’

functionality. Anyone is welcome to contribute in this

way.

• A searchable and interactive version of LEOpedia

on the CCH website. This means that it is fully

searchable, search engine-optimised and has some of

the content (like pdfs, videos and images) embedded

within it. Leopedia is the second very important

lynchpin of the project. While it was being transferred to

the CCH servers, I also tested the links within it and

where possible ‘archived’ the webpages they link to. As

Jude digitises the physical archive material, the scans

and catalogue details are automatically added to

Leopedia. It already is a fantastic resource and its

value will only grow as the project progresses.

• A prototype virtual LEO I created using state of the

art virtual reality technologies. Demonstrations of the

prototype have taken place, the most recent of which

was on 8th November 2019 to LCS committee/

members and we also tested it with a school group in

February 2020. It is early days with this work but it is

already a remarkable project and is probably the most

innovative part of the program. The VR will both allow

people to explore the first LEO and also offers an

opportunity to interact with the new archive, because

documents and other media will be visible as

‘interactives’ within it.

• More than 90 photographs of the Cadby Hall LEO I

installation have been identified to establish the look

and feel of the machine and these are also available on

the CCH website in a digital ‘application’ where all the

photographs are represented by arrows on a plan of

the LEO I room, together with supporting information

(www.computinghistory.org.uk/leodev/photos/). This

has proven to be a useful tool through which to

compare and contrast the details of the room and help

in explaining the nature of the room and the machine to

others. Feedback has suggested our virtual version is

just too clean and tidy to be real, so we’ll work on

adding more details to make it feel more ‘lived in’ as we

go forward!

• A permanent LEO display at CCH, which now forms

part of every tour we give at the museum to school

groups and the general public.

• Plans in place to develop a range of learning

resources for schools and others on LEO and we are

also planning a range of events, including the Reunion

and the community talks, through which we will try to

raise the profile of LEO, the Society, CCH and the

project during the next few years. Plans are also in

place for a new LEO film and for a series of museums

-oriented training sessions on using VR in small

museums.

• A range of training opportunities that have been

provided for both LCS and CCH personnel.

• Volunteer time that has exceeded 1000 hours for the

year, worth over £25,000 to the project (we budgeted

for £6,000!). This support has been fantastic!

This little list doesn’t really do justice to what has been

achieved over the year. Working simultaneously on all

these strands has been a challenge - but the cross-

fertilisation of ideas this process generates is enormously

productive. Overall, I feel that the development work has

gone very well indeed.

Since the official close of year 1 of the project, CCH has

continued to cover Jude’s salary and other costs - so as not

to lose momentum. We’ll be well placed to pick things back

up again in due course. In the meantime, everyone at CCH

would like to offer the Society’s committee and all the

members who have been involved in one way or another

during this first year our sincere thanks. We consider it a

privilege to look after the LEO Society collection and to be

able to work with so many people who contributed to the

development of LEO. We look forward to many more years

of partnership working.

Notes on Lisa McGerty

Dr Lisa McGerty was one of the founding trustees of the Centre for Computing History, Cambridge and is currently employed

as its finance officer. She has an academic interest in the social impact of computing and a personal passion for LEO

computers. She curated an exhibition on LEO in November 2017. Following the submission of our initial successful National

Lottery Heritage Fund bid, Lisa is now leading work on the LEO heritage project at CCH with the Society, helping to unlock

the stories within what she is sure will become a unique archive.

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 4

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The Lenaerts Notebooks

by Lisa McGerty and Frank Land

T his article, by Lisa McGerty and Frank Land, is a shortened version of one which appeared in

The Reform Club magazine this Spring. The Reform Club, founded in 1836, occupies an im-

posing building in London’s Pall Mall. Originally, membership was for supporters of the Great

Reform Act of 1832, and the Club became the political headquarters of the Liberal Party. The

Reform Club is no longer associated with any particular political party, and now serves a purely

social function.

I n early February 2020 an

almost miraculous thing hap-

pened at the Reform Club

when some hidden notebooks

from the 1950s were brought

to light. The handwritten books

date from the 1950s and were

written by one of the engineers

who built the world’s first busi-

ness computer, the Lyons

Electronic Office (LEO). Their

author’s sons had donated

them to the LEO Computers

Society who had scanned

them into digital form, both to

secure their preservation and

to enable them to be accessi-

ble to the wider public. The

notebooks hadn’t seen the light of day for a considerable num-

ber of years!

One of the key pioneers who helped build the Lyons machine

at Cadby Hall in Hammersmith was an engineer called Ernest

Lenaerts, who before the war

had been employed as a Ly-

ons clerk, and, fortunately for

historians of computing histo-

ry, he was a meticulous dia-

rist. He kept notebooks of his

work throughout his career

and his notes are a fascinat-

ing and important record of

the dawn of computing.

And these notebooks were

the ones recently re-

discovered at the Club!

The LEO Computers Society

was understandably delighted that the original notebooks can

now re-join the digital copies in the Society’s archive. The

books have since been deposited at the Centre for Computing

History, a museum in Cambridge, for safekeeping. The Centre

has only recently entered into a partnership with the LEO Com-

puters Society to help preserve the memory of LEO. The Chair

of the Society’s History Sub-Committee, Professor Frank Land

OBE, said of the Reform Club, “we all owe the staff who locat-

ed the treasure a great debt for recognising the worth of the

material and getting in touch with the LEO Computers Society.

The Cambridge Centre for

Computing History were in the

process of transcribing the

scanned version of the note-

books and are grateful that

they now have the originals to

help in that task.”

The notebooks now form part

of the lottery-funded partner-

ship project the Society and

the Cambridge museum are

involved in, which aims to

achieve greater recognition for

LEO’s contribution to the develop-

ment of computing through digiti-

sation and exploration of the Soci-

ety’s archive.

Frank Ernest Lenaerts, photographed in 1966.

LEO1 console -photo by Leo Fantl, circa 1953.

Ernest Lenaerts working on LEO I, at a teleprinter, c1952.

Lenaerts Notebook 3-02. Lenaerts Notebook 3-03.

Lenaerts Notebook 3-04.

Lenaerts Notebook 3-01.

Frank Land

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 5

5 Notes on Frank Land

Frank Land is a graduate of the LSE and is one of our early pioneers having joined LEO, together with his twin brother

Ralph, soon after graduating. Frank is presently Emeritus Professor of Information Technology at the LSE and it is through

his effort and direction that our Society has transformed itself from a disparate group of former employees and colleagues

into an organisation with a more intense historical and academic remit. The Society has benefited greatly from the high

esteem in which he is held by both his peers and the many institutions to which he is connected and held high office. The

resulting impetus has enabled LEO Computers’ Society to establish close bonds with both Universities— LSE, Middlesex,

Warwick and Manchester to name a few, professional bodies— such as the AITT, various Museums and historical societies.

As Chairman of our Oral History Project, his guiding hand, enthusiasm and discipline have been behind our successful and

on- going project to record and archive the memories and milestones achieved in those exciting eureka years, in which many

of us played a very small part. Frank’s Leo Computers Bibliography must stand out as a tribute to his commitment and

tenacity; almost every conceivable reference to LEO is contained therein and it is a primary source for all researchers. Frank

has published widely and he is author and co-author of numerous books, articles and periodicals—far too many to list

individually. See Frank’s OBE investiture on page 14.

W e began our current LEO publicity campaign last July to spread the word about LEO, including current activities

being undertaken within the National Lottery Heritage Project. In the last edition of LEO Matters we reported on initial re-sponse from members to the request for volunteer speakers

Since then, the number of potential speaker volunteers has increased to thirty-one. A package has been distributed, con-sisting of a ‘model’ presentation script supported by Power Point slides and feedback forms. Five speakers have given these talks so far, to audiences as disparate as U3A Science, Engineering and Computer Groups, a Canadian Probus Club and a Further Education & University College. It was indeed pleasing to see the idea of spreading the word about LEO be-ing extended to the younger generation.

Feedback from audiences reveals that all the talks have been well-accepted, very few audience members had been aware of LEO as the world’s first business computer, many considered the story should be more widely known and expressed the in-tention of finding out more by logging on to the LEO Computers Society website.

In addition, seven more speaker volunteers have confirmed dates for their talks this year, while others are still in the plan-ning stage. If any other members would like to join this worth-while speaking project, do not hesitate to contact ne-ville.lyons@leo-computers.co.uk

With the aim of further spreading the word to wider audiences and acquiring LEO artefacts, memorabilia and willingness to participate in interviews, an article was submitted to several

publications of retirement organisa-tions, such as the Probus Magazine, Shell Mex & BP 44 Club News and U3A Third Age Matters. A copy of the latter can be found on LEO Computers Society website.

Responses to the articles have been astounding! At the time of writing, a total of thirty-six replies have been received, mainly from people who have worked on LEO at such locations as Ford Motors, Stewarts and Lloyds, HJ Heinz, Tote Investors, Prudential Insurance, Coventry City Council, Shell Mex & BP and the Post Office. One lady, a Cambridge graduate recruited by John Pinkerton, was employed at Minerva Road as a logic circuit designer. Several have offered Training Manuals or pieces of hardware as donations and participation in oral histo-ry interviews. We are delighted that three of those responding have joined the Society as the result of reading the articles.

Articles have also been submitted, with promises of publication this year, to Bits& Bytes (the ICL Pensioners News-letter), The BP Society Newsletter and IT Now, the British Computer Society Newsletter. To assist in input for the latter, Peter Byford, Frank Land and Neville Lyons gave a LEO presentation and inter-views at the request of Martin Cooper, the BCS Content Strategist, at their London offices.

Publicity from outside the Society was also signifi-cant during the latter part of 2019. Last November, the BBC World Service broadcast a TV and radio item in their Witness Histo-ry series, featuring Mary Coombs, our first female program-mer. The programme received praise in The Spectator. The online edition of The Times featured LEO’s services to the Met Office with Why Lyons LEO was the Met Office’s Cup of Tea. While even the Waitrose Week End publication had a full-page article about Lyons and LEO.

LEO Publicity Bears Fruit

by Neville Lyons

N eville Lyons, one of our trustees took on the role of managing the Society’s publicity last Summer.

Here he outlines the progress of our various initiatives.

The first Lyons Teashop, at 213 Picadilly, London which opened in 1894.

The Lyons Corner House on Coventry Street, London in 1953.

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 6

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A major shock wave went through the industry in Australia in June/July 1963 when, in the space of only a few days,

Peter Gyngell of “lil ol’ LEO” signed contracts in Melbourne, with:

• Shell Australia for a LEO III to replace their IBM punched card system

• Colonial Mutual Life (CML) for a LEO III to replace their ICT punched card system

• H C Sleigh (Golden Fleece Petroleum) for a system to be developed and run on the LEO III/8 service bureau in Syd-ney

This was a wonderful piece of salesmanship by Peter in ex-tremely competitive circumstances which prompted a telegram from IBM’s Shell rep saying: “I doffs me cap to a better sales-man”. He left IBM soon afterwards!

Peter made all these sales essentially single handed, dealing as necessary with all levels within these organisations.

At Shell he dealt with the EDP Manager Cec Lockhart who had visited Secretary Bill Curtis who in turn reported to the General Manager (Mr. Greig?). Peter Murton was supported by Ken Lewis (chief programmer elect} and Con Steendam (head of systems)

At HC Sleigh he dealt with the EDP Manager Jim Hester who reported to the General Manager, Hamilton Sleigh. Jim was supported only by his deputy Ken Handley. LEO was to be re-sponsible for developing the computer programmes.

After this momentous sales performance came the huge task of ensuring successful implementation of the customers’ sys-tems and also successful hardware installations a long way from the factory, the other side of the world in fact.

Wallace Weaving transferred from LEO’s London office in Au-gust/September 1963. I well recall meeting Wallace, his then wife Anne and their 3 children Simon, Hugo and Anna at Mel-bourne Airport, being paged at the airport to take a surprise phone call from Peter Gyngell, who was in New Zealand, telling me that he had booked me on the next flight to New Zealand.

Peter was busily trying to sell a LEO system to the New Zealand Government and needed me to run an impromptu program-ming course in Wel-lington. I had to drive the Weavings to a house in Brighton that we had rented for them and then return directly to the airport to catch the plane to New Zealand. Peter had even phoned a friend at home, Pat was at work, to pack a bag for me and put into a taxi to meet me at the airport. Exciting times indeed, nev-er a dull moment!

Alan Sercombe and I went on site at Shell, me to lead the pro-gramming effort and Alan primarily to look after everything else particularly planning for the arrival and installation of LEO111/15. Wallace Weaving and Geoff Nicholas, who had just arrived from LEO UK, went on site at CML with similar re-sponsibilities.

Soon after Owen McKenzie with wife Marj and their children Mary, Craig and Cassie, Cameron was born later, returned from UK to live in Melbourne. Owen became heavily involved with both CML and H C Sleigh.

Our first task on site was recruiting and training all the people needed for the successful development and implementation of the systems. Not easy, you couldn’t simply advertise for pro-grammers, they just did not exist. These really were the first business computers in Australia. We had to work with the cus-tomers to identify people within their organisations who we felt had the aptitude to be successful, and train them from scratch. We were fortunate to be able to recruit Barry Hooper to join Shell from the Bureau of Census and Statistics in Canberra. I had known Barry in London where he was a programmer with CAV Ltd, a LEO customer which installed LEO111/5 in 1963, before he was recruited to emigrate to Canberra. For Shell to be able to recruit an experienced programmer was an absolute rarity.

In addition, to ensure the success of our customers’ systems, LEO111/8 at Tubemakers, LEO111/15 at Shell Australia and LEO111/22 at CML, it was vitally important for LEO to provide significant on site expertise. LEO III/8 was delivered to the Tubemakers site in Botany, Sydney, in September 1963. It was accompanied by John King, a Cambridge University graduate who came from LEO UK to head Engineering for LEO in Aus-tralia, along with other engineers such as Tony Joyce, Tom Cooper and Nigel Morgan. Similarly Clive Harrison came out from LEO UK to head Operations along with Tim O’Flynn and Gary Diver. A number of talented people joined us from UK over the next few months, names which come readily to mind include Mike Shapcott, Robin Happe, Robert Timms, Richard & Helen Clews, David Jones, Beryl Hulley (now Jones), Mike Smith, Bob Elmer, Floyd Elmes, Graeme Naylor, Simon and Carol Luxemburg, Chris Robinson, Colin Mitchell, Sean Fergu-son, Diana Southern (Gillingham), John Simpson, Gary Pres-ton. In addition we recruited and trained many people locally, initially including such as Ken McLachlan, John Hoey, Dennis

Notes on Neville Lyons

Neville’s grandfather and Sir Joseph Lyons, co-founder of the catering empire, were cousins. The family relationship inspired

Neville to research the history of the company and the story of LEO, resulting in the talks he has been giving for the past 11

years, mainly to retirement organisations. He joined the LEO Computers Society in 2014 and is now a trustee.

History of LEO Computers in Australia

As recalled by Neil Lamming

T his is the second and concluding part of Neil’s detailed account of LEO’s adven-

tures in Oz, this part deals with the period from 1963 onwards.

Neil Lamming at his 21 Club admission. He's pictured with ICL director Stan Owens and wife Pat.

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 7

7 Craney, John Legge, Len Edwards, Graeme Hunt, Ken Castle, Ian Semmel, Ruth Hoad, Ros Fletcher, Martin McBurney, Bill Thompson, Bob McMicking, Don Pattenden, Joe Samanek, Paul Brady, Dan Chadwick, Barry Schepisi and brothers Mike and Barry Gomm.

This was a huge effort over a couple of years but resulted in three very successful installations which set a standard for the industry in Australia. In due course Owen sold HC Sleigh a KDF6 to be installed in Melbourne to replace the service bu-reau running in Sydney, and Shell ordered a second system, LEO326/49 to sit alongside 111/15.

With the change in the corporate structure in UK in 1964 when the company was renamed English Electric LEO Marconi (EELM), in Australia a local equity partner, Amalgamated Wire-less Australia (AWA), took a 40% interest leaving EELM with 60%. The company was renamed AUSTRALIAN COMPUT-ERS reflecting this localization. A Board of Directors was ap-pointed with Chairman Cyril Goodman who was Chairman of English Electric Australia, and Directors Dan McVey and John Hooke who was the son of Sir Lionel Hooke who was Chair-man and Managing Director of AWA. AWA was a local elec-tronics company that over the years had built a good working relationship with both English Electric and Marconi in the UK. Peter Gyngell remained. General Manager and there were no changes to the field operations, it very much reflected its LEO heritage.

The SYSTEM4 range announced in late 1964 became the cor-nerstone product range for Australian Computers. Major Sys-tem4 installations were sold and established, the largest being with the State Bank of Victoria in Melbourne. Three successive Commonwealth Government tenders were won firstly with the Department of Supply, then with the Department of Civil Avia-tion and finally the Department of Customs and Excise. Other System4 customers included RMIT (the Royal Melbourne Insti-tute of Technology), AWA and HC Sleigh.

Of course in 1968 ICL was formed which in Australia saw Aus-

tralian Computers integrated with ICT to form ICL Australia, and AWA bowed out. This whole period from 1961 to 1968 was a dramatic period of rapid growth which was extremely invigor-ating and motivating to be a part of.

What happened next? Of the original core of LEO Computers employees in Australia:

PETER GYNGELL remained General Manager until ICL was formed when he became Marketing Manager under Managing Director Ray Kilroy. When Cliff Oldham came from Internation-al Division in UK to replace Ray when he returned to UK, Peter and his family returned to UK where he joined International Division. After 4/5 years in London Peter and family were very keen to return to Australia and he accepted a role in Sydney involved with Major Accounts and running the Senior Executive Program (SEP). Following retirement Peter remained in Syd-ney, dying in Wollongong in 2018.

COLIN BAKER, PETER GOODRUM and GEOFF NICHOLAS all returned to the UK

WALLACE WEAVING and his family moved to South Africa in 1966 where he took over as General Manager of LEO Comput-ers South Africa. After seeing the two companies integrated to form ICL South Africa in 1968, Wallace returned to UK as Sec-tor Manager based in Bristol. He returned to Sydney in 1976 as Australian Sales Manager for ICL Australia. He died is Sydney in 2012.

ALAN SERCOMBE moved to Adelaide on the formation of ICL to Manage the South Australian Service Bureau business be-fore returning to Sydney to join AWA in their information tech-nology division. This division was spun off into Sanderson Computers and Alan was moved to Melbourne where he has continued to live since retiring.

OWEN McKENZIE moved to Adelaide with ICL where he was the State Manager. He transferred to Sydney in 1976 where he remained until retiring. He died in Sydney in 2015.

Notes on Neil Lamming

NEIL LAMMING moved into ICL Australia when it was formed, initially as Commonwealth Government Area Manager. After a

variety of management roles he was appointed Managing Director of ICL Australia in 1975 to succeed Mike Gifford, another

LEO man who had been sent out from UK in late 1973 to replace Cliff Oldham. In 1983 Neil’s area of responsibility was

increased when he was appointed President of ICL Asia Pacific based in Sydney, a position he held until the end of 1988. He

and Pat still live in Sydney where they are very involved with their 4 children (all Australians, as are Neil and Pat now) and

their 10 grand-children.

News from down under

LEO Reunion in Melbourne, 6th January 2020

P eter Byford, Chair of the Leo Computers Society has family in Melbourne and frequently flies over with his wife to spend

Christmas with them. He takes the opportunity to arrange a get-together with LEO people who live in the area. Here he

describes the 2020 lunch.

T he excellent lunch was at Giorgio's Restaurant in Malvern, a suburb of Melbourne.

Last year's event was held when the temperature was 42 degrees , this year it

was half that at 20 degrees. Despite much of the rail network being disrupted by major

engineering works, most people arrived around 12 noon.

The circulation list of Melbourne area LEO members is around 20, 8 of those were

able to join us plus one who came from the Sydney area, Colin Mitchell.

Amongst the group were operators, engineers, programmers and consultants who had

worked on the LEO llls in the sixties and seventies. Some had started or trained in

England (at Hartree House or Minerva Road) before moving to Australia. Most had

been Melbourne- based with Shell , Colonial Mutual or with LEO ; there was a large LEO team in Australia. Several had also

worked in Sydney, again for LEO and/or Tubemakers. Many had met up at previous annual lunches but others had not met their

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 8

8

ex-colleagues for 50 years or so. A small group of them meet regularly on the last Wednesday of the month at Young & Jack-

son’s, that excellent pub/restaurant opposite Flinders Street Station.

Peter said a few words welcoming everybody and thanking Lex for booking and organising the venue. He also mentioned some

of those who had been unable to make it this time. As can be seen from the photos we were on a long table which meant that

discussions were mainly between small groups, though people did move around. There were a lot of reminiscences of LEO lll

days at Shell, Colonial Mutual or Tubemakers.

It is perhaps interesting to note that amongst the LEO Management in Sydney was Wallace Weaving, who sadly died some

years ago. His son is the actor Hugo Weaving.

John Hoey, Judy Siede, Martin Fuggles, Dave Jones, Graeme Hunt, Colin Mitchell and Robert

Timms

Margaret Byford, Peter Byford, Alan Sercombe, Jill Timms, Jenny Fuggles, Lex Korngold, Rosemary Korngold and Len Edwards.

Len Edwards, Rosemary Korngold, Lex Korngold, Jenny Fuggles, Jill Timms, Alan

Sercombe, Peter Byford, Margaret Byford .

Robert Timms, Colin Mitchell, Graeme Hunt, Dave Jones, Martin Fuggles, John Hobbs, Judy

Siede and, husband, John Hoey.

The ICL AllStars, Australia

Ian Pearson, editor of their magazine tells us about the publication and its readers.

I n January 2019, Hilary Caminer, our Secretary met Ian Pearson in Adelaide. He told her about the organisation and distri-

bution of the ICL All Stars e-magazine and about the reunions of past ICL colleagues. Since agreeing to write this article,

Ian has had the sad task of reporting the death of one of their founding members, Geoffrey Howell, in late January 2020.

Geoff worked for ICL in Melbourne for 24 years and went on to become a mainstay of the AllStars organisation. He is very

greatly missed by his fellow AllStars .

T he ‘All Stars’ themselves encompass people who worked

for ICL or its antecedents and those who worked for their

customers. Reunions started off in Melbourne initiated by

Anthea Gedge, helped by Geoffrey Howell. Sydney followed,

initiated by Val Mickan and Albert Cook. It was Albert, sadly

now passed away, who started the newsletter. The next centre

was Brisbane with a hugely robust team driving things ‘up

north’. Regular reunions are still held in Melbourne, Brisbane,

Adelaide and Sydney. These are informal occasions held either

in people’s homes or in restaurants. They are mostly annual

affairs, though the Brisbane group holds theirs twice a year.

The reunions are self-supporting – the organisation works on a

Hilary presented Ian with a copy of Georgina Ferry’s book on LEO.

The story of the AllStars

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 9

9 no cost basis.

Ian joined the AllStars venture in 1969 taking over the maga-

zine editorship on a ‘temporary’ basis 10 years ago – and he is

still doing it. The magazine itself which chronicles the activities

of the All Stars, their reunions and their reminiscences is pub-

lished about 5 times a year. The distribution database which

used to be maintained by Geoff Howell is now run by Raf Dua.

(Raf is an internationally renowned PERT specialist.) Impres-

sively, there are around 1000 active contacts on the distribution

list, both in Australia and overseas – in Canada, the US, Korea

and , of course, the UK. The Magazine is available via the

LEO Computers Society website – the most recent edition was

published in March 2020. In that edition, Ian writes: ‘there is a

serious expectation that the ICL

AllStars will now move across

the Tasman and set its sails in

the delicious land of the Silver

Fern’ – i.e. New Zealand! We

await further developments.

AllStars Front Page.

Memories and Reminiscences

Cynthia Reid – Memories of LEO

I was born in Headingley, Leeds in 1935 and from an early

age had an interest in science which was encouraged by my

parents. I attended Brudenell Primary School, Bennett Road

Junior School and Leeds Girls' High School. In 1954 I was of-

fered Exhibitions to both Oxford and Cambridge Universities

and I elected to read Mathematics at Newnham College, Cam-

bridge. At the end of my first year I switched to Mechanical

Sciences and graduated in 1957 at which time I was recruited

by John Pinkerton to work in LEO's engineering design depart-

ment at Minerva Road in Park Royal, Northwest London. I had

little knowledge of electronics or computers but it seemed an

interesting challenge and I was there for four years until mov-

ing on to IBM. (My later career included lecturing at IBM, then

technical writing and eventually managing a Council Social

Services Department!)

There were no other women engineers at Minerva Road, but

this was a situation I was entirely accustomed to and never

really thought about. I had been the only female undergraduate

in the 2000-strong Engineering Faculty at Cambridge, the first

and only woman member of the Cambridge University Air

Squadron (I believe there were no more until the 1980s), the

only female pilot at Yeadon (now Leeds and Bradford) Flying

Club where I got a scholarship to attain my PPL whilst still at

school and the only woman in the LEO motor cycling group

where I rode a scarlet Norton 600cc Dominator. I guess being

'the only one' was just a fact of life that I accepted without

question - and I am happy to say that I have never experienced

prejudice on this account (although I did have to ceaselessly

pester the Air Ministry for 2 years before I was finally accepted

into the Air Squadron - even with my pilot licence).

At Minerva Road, as a design engineer, I worked on the very

early attempts at OCR (optical character recogni-

tion) where we were trying to design an input

device which retail departments could use to or-

der stock from a wholesale or central distributor. I

think we just about managed to detect a very

thick black pencil stroke across a precisely cir-

cumscribed quarter-inch square! It was an excit-

ing time in that we were moving from thermionic

valves and mercury delay line storage to transis-

tors, printed circuit boards and solid state

memory. One rather amusing and now horrifying

thing I recall is that we sometimes used to play

with little balls of mercury, rolling them around for

fun on the bench-top. They came from the mer-

cury delay tubes used for computer data storage

and we didn't realise how dangerous they were!!!

I think I still have somewhere the soldering iron I

was issued on my first day at Minerva Road to-

gether with the remains of a reel of multicore sol-

der!

The only names I recall of my days there were

my immediate manager John Bruce, our lab as-

sistant Ernie Aylott and a couple of fellow design engineers

Ivan Boskov and Yoram Azar.

E arlier in the year, The University of the Third Age published in their magazine ‘Third Age Matters’ an article by Neville

Lyons called ‘Byting the Biscuit’. We invited readers to contact us with any LEO memories or offers of memorabilia and

were delighted when nearly 30 readers wrote to us of their personal LEO memories. Here is just one of these – chosen partly

to highlight some of the women pioneers.

Cynthia Reid, a member of the Cambridge University Air Squadron, at the controls of a de Havilland Chipmunk in 1956, shortly before she joined LEO.

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 10

10

A fter graduating from the LSE in 1950 and considering ca-

reer options in academia or the world of commerce I first

chose academia, joining the LSE Economics Research Divi-

sion as a Research Assistant. The work was demanding but

the work environment informal and you were responsible only

to the more senior academic you worked for. There was little

notion of hierarchy. But career progression was limited. So I

decided to give commerce a try. After applying to a number of

well-known companies I was interviewed and offered a job by

J. Lyons, not as a Management Trainee as I had hoped, but as

an accounts clerk in their Statistics Office.

The environment I now worked in was startlingly different to

that of the LSE. The work itself – maintaining the cost ac-

counts of a small number of Lyons business units was unde-

manding except when anomalies in results were spotted – a

comparatively rare event. The senior managers, Blackaby and

Benstead, were remote figures, using different toilets and eat-

ing in separate, and by repute, superior dining rooms. There

was a common meeting ground in the extensive social facilities

comprising sports and a variety of social activities including

choirs, chess and bridge clubs and so on.

Clearly, though not a formal management trainee, my career

development was being tracked. And when the Lyons team

working on the computer venture called LEO, of which I was

totally unaware, needed to expand from its handful of pioneers,

I was picked out as a potential programmer and, in company

with individuals from other departments including Mary Blood

(Mary Coombs), sent on what was called an appreciation

course but was in practice used to pick the wheat from the

chaff. Of the dozen or so on the course Mary and I were

picked out to join the LEO team.

At that time the LEO team was led by TRT at its head, support-

ed by John Pinkerton in charge of all technology and engineer-

ing matters, and David Caminer head of systems, program-

ming and operations. Pinkerton, who had been recruited as a

graduate researcher from Cambridge University, presided over

a small but growing team of engineers, including some Lyons

employees, but mainly recruited from outside Lyons. Caminer,

himself seconded from heading-up the Lyons O&M Office, was

supported by a very small team at that time exclusively com-

prising staff recruited from Lyons offices. When I joined the

team in 1952 they had established LEO I as a working comput-

er operating the first of a growing number of jobs for Lyons

business units as well as being used by outside organisations

for a variety of different tasks.

One feature of the set up I joined was that the background and

skills of TRT as its head overlapped with that of Caminer and

his team. This entailed both a

strength and potential weakness. Its

strength lay in mutual understanding

of the way Lyons worked – the Ly-

ons ethos – and not only what had

to be done but also how to do it.

The senior Lyons management had

made sure that the leaders of the

new LEO venture were highly com-

petent, but also visionary, innovative

and thrusting. And those character-

istics could also lead to conflict un-

less harnessed to provide a fruitful

dissonance. A good example is the

launch of the teashop ordering job,

the first venture into an application

which could be described as business process engineering.

TRT had an immediate idea that the use of LEO could trans-

form the way the teashops were run and was impatient for the

work to be done. But it was the forensic skills of David Camin-

er which teased out the problems faced by teashop managers

and found a solution which provided the ground-breaking tea

ordering system.

Joining the LEO team meant for me a change from the rather

formal – though less demanding- atmosphere of the Statistics

Office to a very much more demanding, less formal working

climate – much more enjoyable for me and more redolent of

my first job with LSE. At first, as a very junior trainee, I worked

closely with my mentors and peers with only limited interaction

with David Caminer. TRT I knew of by reputation rather than

from any personal interaction. Both had a reputation as domi-

nant characters quick to anger and intolerant of mistakes. With

David I had direct experience of those characteristics but

Personal Recollections of TRT by Frank Land

Profile of Thomas Raymond Thompson 1907 -1976

from our developing Pathfinders ‘Roll of Honour’

T homas Raymond Thompson or TRT, as he was known, was, like his boss John Simmons, a first- class mathematics

graduate. He began his career working for a department store as assistant secretary, but was recruited in 1931 to join

John Simmons at Lyons. By 1946 he had risen to be Chief Assistant Comptroller. In the following year he and Oliver Stand-

ingford were sent by Simmons on the mission to the USA which resulted in the epoch-making report suggesting that comput-

ers, then regarded as machines for technical calculations, could be used for business processes. The acceptance of the re-

port and the subsequent establishment of LEO Computers Limited led to his appointment as what was in effect Chief Execu-

tive. He played a leading and decisive role in the success of LEO. TRT was known for his rapid understanding of complex

problems and of finding solutions. However, on the take-over of LEO Computers Limited by English Electric, he found his

new position as second-in-command unpalatable and left to join Shell-Mex and BP as computer advisor.

Note to readers: One of our ongoing projects is to produce a series of short profiles of all the LEO pioneers. We are partway

through this and would, of course, welcome any contributions from readers about their memories of the pioneers in the early

days. More profiles will be published in subsequent editions of LEO Matters. Here Frank Land enlarges on the short profile

above to provide us with a vivid picture of what working with TRT was like for him.

Thomas Raymond Thompson (TRT).

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 11

11

C ollecting LEO memorabilia can be exciting – when we

come across material from the early days, we can almost

feel ourselves back in time. In collecting items left by my father,

David, I have recently come across a manila file containing a

dozen or so articles collected from magazines and journals

dating from 1950 to 1953 – all speculating about what the

newly developing ‘electronic calculators’ might do to transform

the way people work in offices. Of course, in 1950 there were

only a handful of computers operating worldwide and all of

them were performing technical and scientific applications. In

late 1951 LEO ran the world’s first office application and by

1953 a number of computer manufacturers were competing for

the new office market, but the number actually being used for

business data processing was still tiny.

Here are just a few extracts – how prescient of these writers!

1950 ‘Electronics’ W.B. Floyd

‘Business men as well as mathematicians are fascinated by

the possibilities of electronic computation. What they see, pri-

marily, are payroll savings. Of secondary importance, they see

the possibility of securing additional facts about their business-

es. When a businessman reads in the newspapers about a

machine that will do in thirty minutes what it would take thirty

people a month or more to do manually, he naturally asks

‘when can I get one of these machines!’ He may not think to

ask whether or not the machine will actually do the clerical jobs

that need to be done in his office.’

… anyone who has experienced the compromises and the bor-

derline decisions that often have to be made in using present-

day office equipment cannot help dreaming of a machine that

is engineered for their particular work.

quickly realised that all his demands for perfection were devot-

ed to making the LEO enterprise work, whilst providing us with

a learning experience we would never forget.

As I grew in experience and seniority, I began to interact with

TRT much more. I had to brief him before meetings with LEO

customers. He demonstrated a rapid appreciation of the is-

sues and probed deeply into my own understanding. Any

looseness in my briefing was dissected and corrected. I did

not encounter his reputed temper. But his clear grasp of com-

plicated issues was combined with a certain naivety. A good

example was, when returning from Ford’s Dagenham, I at-

tempted to explain the working of the Ford Motor Company

production planning and control system, a complex system

unlike many systems I had come across. I devised a summary

block diagram explaining the flows of data in the system. I

knew that the block diagram hid many of the actual complexi-

ties. I still treasure TRT’s complimenting me – very much, as I

appreciated later, a feature of his approach to recognising the

work of subordinates. At that time, thinking we now both fully

understood the system and could therefore provide a solution

he assumed ‘problem solved’.. There is no doubt that had he

realised the nature of the hidden complexities he would quickly

have worked out a way of dealing with them.

I discovered during long car journeys with TRT his total lack of

‘side’ – he was only interested in a person’s capability not their

background. And he expected that those that had been select-

ed for LEO had that capability and woe to those whom he felt

fell short. This was combined with a belief in his own ability to

overcome difficulties and bring all projects he was involved with

to a successful conclusion. He had his own personal guru –

the French philosopher, Jesuit priest and palaeontologist Teil-

hard de Chardin. During these car journeys would expound

elements of Teilhard’s notions and why they appealed to him.

Somehow, concentrating on my driving the main message

eluded me. Reading about Teilhard in Wikipedia now I can

better understand that his blend of scientific and spiritual ideas

would attract TRT and offer him a guideline. But during these

car journeys conversations were not confined to serious busi-

ness matters or matters philosophical. TRT was an avid

Bridge player and engaged in Lyons social and cultural provi-

sions for its staff and these too were subjects for discussion.

There was never any doubt that it was TRT who ran the LEO

enterprise - even amongst the strong characters who made up

the top of the LEO team it was clear that TRT was the boss. I

knew next to nothing about those above him in the Lyons hier-

archy such as John Simmons and the role he had played in the

LEO story. The formation of LEO Computers Ltd in 1954

brought our newly appointed chairman, Anthony Salmon, into

the picture, but to us it appeared that his role was primarily to

act as a PR front. A vivid memory is entertaining potential cus-

tomers for LEO’s to lunch in an old Heron glider fitted out to

demonstrate Lyons airline meals, presided over by Anthony

Salmon who demonstrated how to pour the cream into a Lyons

jam tart – which was delicious. But it was TRT as Managing

Director in whom authority rested. Of course the subsequent

sale of LEO Computers Limited to English Electric showed

where the real power rested.

It was not till much later that I learned about TRT’s earlier ca-

reer with Lyons. He had played a key role when at the start of

World War II the Government asked Lyons to establish a major

munitions factory to help in the war effort. The factory became

a vital supplier of shells for the armed services. I also came to

understand the crucial role he played in recognising that com-

puters were a tool that could transform industry, but just as

significantly he recognised and predicted the role they might

play in transforming society. The success in launching LEO

and seeing it become for a time the most prominent European

business computer company further enhanced TRT’s stature

and reputation.

That made it even harder to bear that when Lyons sold their

computer interests to English Electric. TRT instead of getting

the top job was relegated to serve under Wilf Scott from Eng-

lish Electric, a person who had neither the drive nor vision of

TRT. It ended badly. TRT, after decades working for Lyons,

decided he had had enough and when given the opportunity

joined Shell-Mex and BP. At the time he had visions of trans-

forming the way the oil giants ran their business starting with

the forecourt of its petrol stations. But he was an advisor not a

manager. He overestimated his powers of persuasion and he

did not succeed in getting the established management to ac-

cept his more ambitious notions. It is sad that a career which

had reached such peaks would end in frustration if not failure.

But he will be remembered in history as the man who foresaw

what has become the second industrial revolution.

Hidden Treasures by Hilary Caminer

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 12

12 Such machines would sell themselves.’

May 1951 ‘The Office’ John S. Coleman

The writer considers whether ‘the clerk will become extinct’.

‘The history of the Industrial Revolution does not suggest an

abrupt end to a whole class of jobs. And the clerical revolution

will be what the industrial revolution really was – an evolution.

Today, even with factory mechanisation, there are more indus-

trial workers than ever before. Mechanisation may change the

nature of the work they do. It may demand that they acquire –

over a period of time – new skills; but it does not cause their

class of jobs to vanish overnight. The carriage-making industry

employed 62,500 in 1900. Today, 50 years later, the automo-

bile industry which replaced it, employs twelve times that

many. With increased mechanisation in the office, manual cleri-

cal jobs will in part be replaced by operating jobs, maintenance

jobs, programming jobs and many others.’……’Our richest re-

source is the capacity of people for imagination, judgement and

critical thinking. If we can mechanise the routine work which

must be done and which does not require these human attrib-

utes, we shall free people for the more important work that only

humans can do.’

1951 ‘The Accountant’ J. O. Swindlehurst

In industry the motto seems to be ‘he who rests, rusts.’

In a few years from now the book-keeping machines and

punch card systems which today seem to be the last words in

accountancy mechanisation and modernisation will be looked

upon as antiquated gadgets pinning down valuable labour and

office space. We are moving rapidly into an electronic age and

soon we shall see the first efforts of the futuristic school of

bookless book-keepers, with cathode and anode replacing

debit and credit. …These developments are sure to come.

They may even be just around the corner. There will doubtless

be a fierce rearguard action fought by the die-hards of the quill

and copper-plate brigade, and, in the conduct of a fighting with-

drawal none surpass this stolid force who have been in stub-

born retreat ever since the introduction of the steel nib and car-

bon paper first degraded their calling.’

1951 ‘The Office’ Report from the 4th international meet-

ing of the Systems and Procedures Association of Ameri-

ca

‘While cautioning severely against the ‘hot-rod’ school of elec-

tronics with its inflated claims of robot offices, several leaders

from the office equipment industry explained that progress

was being made toward an eventual goal of large scale elec-

tronic application to office work. It should be remembered that

the original development of electronics held no concern or rela-

tionship with business or office use. Judging from the questions

and attention given to this subject, however, it was evident that

the progressive office manager wishes to prepare himself for

whatever electronic equipment becomes available, although he

admittedly does not know when to expect it.’

1953 ‘Business’ Richard Lawrence

‘Today, a few pioneers are using electronic computers to tack-

le routine clerical procedures. Tomorrow these new devices

may well be standard equipment in every efficient office.’

The writer quotes an executive at Monsanto ‘We hope some

day to have a wage employee at our Texas City plant punch a

time-clock card which will be transmitted by wire or other

means to a central computer at our accounting office in St Lou-

is. All computations relative to the earnings of the employee..

would be made by the central computer. This information

would be transmitted back to our Texas City plant by wire for

disbursement to the employee…

Such a day is, of course, still a long way off.’

In his handwriting in the file, my father started to jot down a

vision of the way computers might be used in the future:

‘It is a field that touches intimately each aspect of the daily life

of the ordinary citizen. He rises from his bed in a house for

which in due course he will receive a rates demand, calculated

and sent out by local authorities every year with payment duly

accounted for. If the house is being bought through a Building

Society an account exists for them amongst many others.

When he switches on the light, he is setting in motion a pro-

cess that shortly will reflect itself in an electricity account.

Should he fail to renew his radio licence by the due anniversary

date…..’

Clerical work and management information has changed so

radically in the almost 70 years since LEO started work - can

we even begin to imagine the world of 2090?

Note: The file of cuttings from which these items are taken –

which really deserve to be read in fuller detail - is about to go to

CCH for digitising – and then you will all be able to read it in

full! And one more note, it is clear reading these items that

women were felt to be almost invisible creatures as far as the

‘serious’ world of work was concerned – the female pronoun is

almost nowhere to be found!

Hilary with Jason Fitzpatrick, CEO of CCH with a LEO display.

Notes on Hilary Caminer

Hilary is the older daughter of David Caminer, one of the LEO pioneers. In her retirement from a career in further and higher

education, she has become Secretary of the Society and works enthusiastically to support the heritage project.

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 13

13

Leo’s on his way to Jo’burg!

This week plans have been completed for the first South African

LEO Computer Service Bureau to be set up in Johannesburg. It will

house, for the use of South African Industry and Agriculture, the

most advanced computer ever to be designed especially for com-

mercial work – the LEO III Automatic Office.

LEO is already working for South Africans – Several South African

organisations are already benefiting from LEO. Members of the Farmer’s

Co-Operative Wool and Produce Union all over South and South-West

Africa receive payment for Karakul pelts remarkably quickly and accurate-

ly after the London auctions, because a LEO Automatic Office handles the

accounting. Stewarts and Lloyds, South Africa’s largest makers of steel

tube, send engineering calculations to the Stewarts and Lloyds LEO in

Corby, England. One of these problems can take a qualified man a

month. LEO does it in six minutes and sends back the answer by return of

post.

Versatile. LEO, being built for commercial work, is extremely versatile.

The same LEO that handles engineering calculations also handles Stew-

arts and Lloyds complex payroll of many thousand, forecasts how much

ore would be won from each quarry to supply the various furnaces, and

invoices and analyses sales from depots all over the U.K. Elsewhere LEO

Automatic Offices are scheduling production, controlling stocks, keeping

the books and carrying out many other complicated tasks, faster and

more accurately than ever before.

LEO can help you. LEO can help you in much the same way. It is backed

by consultancy and Maintenance Service that has been operating com-

puters on a regular commercial basis for six years. No other organisation

can speak with such authority. Now the new LEO bureau brings this ser-

vice to South Africa. Find out how LEO can increase efficiency, save time,

space and money in your organisation. Get in touch now!

It’s a boy! and we’ve called him Leo III

Even in the short history of electronic data processing in industry,

it is a third generation LEO. In fact, it is the logical result of no less

than ten year’s experience. Experience not only of making comput-

ers, but of actually operating them against the clock in industries

where speed and reliability are vital.

LEO III offers you all the major advances in commercial data pro-

cessing.

*It is versatile enough to handle your accounting, invoicing payroll –

and your engineering calculations, too. *It is ingenious enough to work

on several of these jobs simultaneously.* It is able to work in any nota-

tion – decimal, sterling, coinage weights and measures. *It is powerful

enough to hold, in its magnetic core store, up to 320,000 digits, and

operate a priority system for access to them automatically. Being fully

transistorised, it is fast even by computer standards, reliable and

easily maintained. Its printer (50,000 lines an hour) and its magnetic

tapes and other input and output equipment are fast to match. *It is

space saving because it is made up of compact, independent units,

each with its own power unit and requiring no ventilation ducts. * It is

extensible, making it possible to start every small and to grow without

any dislocation of operation. LEO III has been developed to help large

and small organisations to save time, money and space.

LEO III is backed by a Consultancy and Maintenance Service whose

experience in this field is second to none.

A LEO III Automatic Office will be operating at the new LEO Computer

Service Bureau in Johannesburg. We invite you to discuss with us how

the LEO service can improve efficiency and save money in your own

organisation.

LEO goes to South Africa!

W e recently discovered a pair of newspaper ads for LEO III when it was about to go to South Africa.

We reproduce the delightful smiley lion images – highly appropriate both for Leo and South Africa, of course! (A note:

Karakul are, for those like your editor who did not know, a breed of sheep with fine woolly pelts used for making coats.)

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 14

14

Tony Morgan: June 1937 – April 4th 2020 An appreciation. by John Daines

Frank Land’s Investiture LEO COMPUTERS SOCIETY

Registered charity: 1182253

2019-2020

Peter Byford Chairman

Bernard Behr Treasurer

Hilary Caminer Secretary

Frank Land Chair History Sub- Committee Vince Bodsworth Website & TMNoC

John Daines Documentation & Software

John Paschoud Data Protection & Education

Neville Lyons Marketing & LEO Talks

Bob Stevenson Website & Photo Archive

Mike Storey Reunion Coordinator

John Aeberhard Public Relations

Graham Briscoe Investigative Projects

Philip Cleary Social Media

Gloria Guy Merchandise

Mike Tyzack Oral History Coordinator

Colin Williams LEO Lecture Series

Lisa McGerty Centre for Computing History

Elisabetta Mori PhD Scholar

Dag Spicer North American Correspondent

In addition we have a number of volunteers

who are helping with the history projects. Our

recruitment of new members is mainly by way

of our website. We now have over 800 mem-

bers around the globe.

www.leo-computers.org.uk

newsletter@leo-computers.org.uk

Designed and Published by

Bernard Behr

at LEO Computers Society

-

A s we were pleased to report in our last edition, Professor Frank Land, chairman of our Histo-

ry sub-committee was awarded an OBE in last year’s Queen’s birthday honours. The OBE

was ‘for services to the Information Systems Industry’.

Frank, who lives in Totnes, chose to receive his award in a ceremony held in June 2019 for Dev-

on residents. The award was presented by HM Lord-Lieutenant of Devon, David Fursdon, who

said: “It is good to see worthy people in Devon getting the reward and recognition that they de-

serve.". Above is a photo taken at the investiture. The Society is truly delighted that Frank’s great

talents and achievements have been publicly recognised.

T ony Morgan, who played a key role in the commissioning of Leo II and Leo III systems, has

died, a victim of Covid-19. Tony went to Harrow County Grammar School and, after getting

four A levels, joined the RAF, as his stint of National Service, where he was trained as an air-

radar fitter. When at school he had heard, on the radio, about the original Lyons collaboration

with Cambridge and the first successful job being run. After demob he joined Leo Computers in

1957 as a trainee engineer and was moved to work on Leo II/1 at Elms House before complet-

ing the training course, progressing to shift leader. Advancement was to the Minerva Road

factory where he worked on Leo II/5, the first machine with drums and magnetic tapes, which

were to be his specialism over the years. He then commissioned II/8, the first Leo machine with

core store, for the UK motor manufacturer Standard Triumph. At that stage of Leo develop-

ment, and subsequently, design faults could show up in commissioning. As a result of diligent

fault finding, he made modifications that were subsequently confirmed by the design authority.

The Duke of Edinburgh visited the factory whilst Tony was working on this machine and talked

to him; a photo on Tony’s wall shows the two together.

He then moved to work on the pilot Leo III with Steve Farrow. It was a half-word machine to

LEO Matters Vol 7 Page No. 15

15 prove the new concepts incorporated in the machine: importantly, micro-

programming and multi-programming with store protection. He then com-

missioned III/2 for Rand Mines, South Africa, and took it to Johannesburg,

6,000 miles from home, where he spent 6 weeks getting it tested and

accepted by the customer. No emails then, just airmails; his record of this

(deposited at CCH Cambridge) makes fascinating reading. Leo III/1 was

still in the factory. Years later David Caminer said that what Tony had

achieved was incredible. On his return he commissioned III/5, the “shop

window” machine for CAV in Acton that was visible from the pavement

outside, and went on to III/9, the largest configuration yet with many mag-

netic tapes, for Customs and Excise in Southend.

A word about the commissioning process: in those days there was a sin-

gle engineer responsible for commissioning each system. This required

management skills to manage the timescales and the supporting team of

engineers, operators and support staff. It meant managing all stages from

understanding the configuration and any new items, progress chasing

supply chains of the many outsourced items, locating the units arriving at

the commissioning bay in the factory, getting everything cabled up and

power applied, testing all units and progressively integrating them using

the comprehensive engineering test programs. At this stage the Master

Routine operating system was loaded and the system was tested using

specially adapted commercial programs to simulate the eventual custom-

er environment. A formal acceptance test was conducted based on the

stringent requirements of the standard government contracts, whether or

not the customer was private or government. This set a high target stand-

ard and everyone knew that trials of public sector machine would be su-

pervised by a team of professional engineers drawn from the GPO. The

on-site maintenance engineers would assist in the factory and get to know

their machine. After a successful factory test the system was broken

down, delivered to site, covers were fitted and it was re-commissioned

and tested again before handover to the customer.

But back to Tony, who took over management of Commissioning the LEO

III range of what was by that time English Electric LEO in March 1964 and

over the next four years expanded to a team of forty including twenty en-

gineers and twelve operators together with supporting functions, using

eight air-conditioned sites across two factory buildings. During this peri-

od, Tony led the introduction of the faster Leo 326 machines that initially

went to the GPO (now BT) for telephone billing, one of the largest single

computer orders ever at that time. There were some unexpected tech-

nical problems that required him to get design modifications implemented

by the development engineers. Eventually the machines were installed

on a routine basis and telephone billing was a great success. Years later,

a senior field engineering manager confided to Tony that the Minerva

Road team was the best he’d come across in his career.

In late 1967 Tony moved towards Product Planning, via a spell of systems

support for customers during the changeover from English Electric to ICL.

He was involved in product planning for elements of System 4, 1900,

2903 and then New Range (2900) where he sorted out the operat-

ing station, using David Caminer’s influence. After some time he re-joined

Government Sales as a technical consultant looking at all the “red alerts”

and major problem sites.

This is where Leo came back on the scene. The GPO’s Charles House

site in West Kensington now had four 326 systems with sixty magnetic

tape decks of two types and there were big problems that led to the cus-

tomer withholding maintenance charges (a lot of money). Tony instituted

training for engineers, got the spares situation resolved, ensured that the

tape system worked and that the engineers would keep them that way.

He stayed with it until the rolling six month performance had returned to

contractual level and the customer paid. He was awarded a Customer

Satisfaction Award and joined what was by then ICL’s Post Office (Sales)

Region to liaise with all their very many sites – Leo, System 4 and 2900 –

he did that for several years. In the late 1970’s it became clear that the

Post Office wasn’t redeveloping its billing system, from Leo, quickly

enough and that the Leo machines would life expire before completion.

He suggested that the Post Office should pay ICL to develop a DME/Leo

(using a 2960 processor to implement the Leo microprograms as had

been done with DME /System 4 and DME/1900). This was done at the

ICL Scottish Development Centre in Dalkeith and Tony supplied them with

the Leo microprogram flowcharts. When they were ready, he took the

Leo engineering test programs to Scotland and within a week all were

working and the Master Routine could then be loaded: another successful

project that protected the customer and ICL’s interests, although it wasn’t

extensively used. Again, his detailed record of this is lodged at CCH. His

last working years were spent with Customer Service HQ in Putney and

then Stevenage until he retired in 1995 after 38 years’ service.

He had always been a member of the Leo Computers Society and a

member of its management committee until ill-health made it difficult for

him to attend meetings. However, as technical consultant, he continued

to be the “go-to person” if a piece of equipment turned up or there was a

technical query. His encyclopaedic knowledge was absolutely invaluable.

He generously donated £5000 for the commemorative plaque and infor-

mation board for LEO that have been installed close to the Cadby Hall

site. He regularly attended the committee meetings and reunions until

arthritis and other health problems prevented it.

Tony was very sociable. He played rugby until 42; in the RAF, broke one

leg and 3 months off; for Lyons / Centaurs, broke the other leg and 3 days

off; he was then treasurer or secretary for another 25 years and still in-

volved, through the club, with David Caminer and Doug Comish at inter-

national matches. He was always keen on jazz (Ken Colyer) and attend-

ed dance weekends until the arthritis stopped it. His passion was Formu-

la I and he had a web site with fine detail on all races since when. He

was a supporter of the London Transport Museum and photographed

each of the different “maze” symbols that are placed at every tube station.

He gave much to the company, to sport and the Society, he will be

missed.

Tony in 1960 showing the Duke of Edinburgh the printout from Powers Samastronic printer on LEO II/8 which was being set up. The person in the middle is Stan Holwill who was conducting that phase of his tour of

the factory at Minerva Road.

Tony with gold ingot at a visit to Harmony Gold Mine, South

Africa in 1962 whilst installing LEO III/2.

Tony our Technical Advisor at the HAC Reunion, 15th Oct 2017.

Tony at the Middle Temple Reunion.